A Job Hunter Interviews a Recruiter, Ep.1: Josh Brence

I would have named this article “Josh Brence is a People”, as titled automatically by MS Word, but despite me thinking it’s funny the title would have lacked a bit of context, and probably not have appealed to the reader. And isn’t that the point of our targeted content, to appeal to the reader? As a job hunter, I need to appeal to my reader: the recruiter. The first ‘Yes’ in my job hunt journey is going to come from a recruiter, after all.

-????????? How do I know what the recruiter wants? How do I get in their head?

-????????? What pain points are they dealing with? Can I help?

-????????? How can I be the most desirable candidate among so many others?

-????????? Should I tattoo their name to my body?

After spending an inordinate amount of time imagining what a recruiter wants in a job hunter, I decided I would ask a recruiter, instead! Shortly after this realization, I connected with a friendly and unapologetically optimistic fellow named Josh Brence. As an ex-Amazonian now at TechInsights, Josh noticed my AWS Amazon branding and struck up a conversation which eventually led to our scheduling a chat about the Job Hunter-Recruiter dynamic.

Below is a distillation of a transcription of a web meeting where, in what is possibly a world first (not true), A Job Hunter Interviews a Recruiter, Episode 1.

? Josh Brence is a people-lover who fell into recruiting and stuck with it. Not every recruiter has the same motivations, and they may not all be the clay golems created by a mad warlock that I thought they were.

“Everybody kind of falls into [recruiting], but I think I fell into it for all the right reasons… I got into this because I genuinely like people like the human interaction part; I get to network, I get to have meaningful conversations with new people. I think there are a lot of people who fall into recruiting for all the wrong reasons… When the economy was hot, there were a lot of people that got into recruiting just because big tech would pay them astronomical amounts of money to stare at resumes all day.”

- Josh Brence

It’s important to realize that each recruiter is motivated by different things; some are out there because they genuinely want to help job seekers, and some are out there to just do their job; pay their mortgage; make the boss happy; to earn a pay check. No motive is objectively wrong. How can a job seeker tap into a recruiter’s motivations?

Josh reports that the 2023 and 2024 series of tech layoffs has also affected HR recruitment teams. Many recruiting departments are now running on skeleton crews and couldn’t possibly perform top-quality work.

“Now there's a skeleton crew that probably hasn't been trained and doesn't have a ton of experience that's responsible for filling roles. […] Unfortunately, when times are good, recruiters are needed, and when they're not in, you're cutting back. It's an easy place to cut costs.”

It’s important to realize that not only are the job seekers feeling it, but recruiters are also feeling the effects of the 2023/24 tech layoffs. Empathy and kindness towards one another can’t be quantified well, but I bet more of both would help. How can we make each other's lives easier?

?tl;dr Sounds like recruiters are human, and not reptilians as I had suspected. They are often genuinely interested in helping (but not always – each one is different! Like a snowflake). And the layoffs hurt them, too.

Now, for the Question/Answer portion of our segment:

Q: To dig into your particular experience with recruiting, what does your workflow look like from A-Z? Boss says “We need to fill this role. Go.” What does it look like for you from there?

A: Being a smaller company, we’re able to be more nimble. We don't have these long drawn out offer or position approval processes.

1.?????? Role opens. Informally, the bosses (who sit in the same office as me) report a new role being open, and then formally, the new role will be added to the ATS system, Air Table / JazzHR

2.?????? Job postings created. After receiving the job need (formally and/or informally), now recruiter goes into the market place and creates a job posting and starts screening candidates; putting lines in the water.

3.?????? Inbound Applicants. There's typically a steady stream of applications that I look through [daily], but I supplement that with doing what we do... (step 4).

4.?????? Outreach and Sourcing. I'm going to reach out to candidates using different tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, which provides me with the ability to drop anybody a note on LinkedIn whether or not I'm connected to them. Waiting for the perfect person to apply very rarely happens.

5.?????? Continue narrowing down candidate pile until you’re left with one: technical projects, final interviews.

“There’s this misnomer that recruiters don't take the time to look through resumes. […] I don't love the term low hanging fruit, but why wouldn't you take the time to look at resumes that apply to you when they've already shown an interest in coming to work for you? […]

“So it's a very clean process flow and I think of it as a upside down pyramid: start with a everybody potentially that's out there looking for work and you just start narrowing down the funnel: screening, final interviews, projects; you use those tools to narrow down what could be thousands of candidates to the one that you want to hire.”

Q: Do you have a go-to place to post jobs, to LinkedIn first, or do you have like a button that says post to all of the job forums at the same time?

A: You used to [have to post at each]. Because [JazzHR] has a relationship with with LinkedIn, our jobs automatically get scraped and posted LinkedIn. So when we post a job in jazzHR, it goes to we don't we don't pay for any specific job board. There's different, you know, federal and state websites that pick up the jobs (this likely only applies to govt industry roles). And you'll notice you know, sponsored jobs, and there's certain roles that you're getting emails about, those companies are paying for that.

?

Q: How do you review a resume when comparing it to the job description? What are you looking for, disqualifiers?

A: Definitely not disqualifiers. Leverage technology for what it's there for [in terms of using the pre-screening application questions]. When I scan a resume, when I read it like a book top to bottom, I typically go to experience first, like the summary. I want to start seeing some experience. You know, just make sure that there's some relevant experience, some relevant skill, and then I start digging into it and looking at impact (ie. Managed $4mil quota, 170% of quota). [After establishing experience in the role], then I start looking for industry experience. ie. It would be really nice if they've been in semiconductor microelectronics space, which is the world we live in, or they've worked for Gartner or other similar research firms.

And then if I'm on the fence, I might put them into a pile for a ‘comeback to this’, especially if I, let's say, I come in on a Monday and there's 50 resumes to look through in that moment, one resume look might look really, really good. But as I get through 10 more, I'm like, OK, these are starting to look even better now. That's kind of just the game that I play here and how I read resumes now: there's this one that I wanted to circle back to, which I don't think is necessarily understood at a high level in the world of recruiting.

[Note:] On US Government Jobs: if you're doing business with the federal government in any way, you become OFCCP compliant office of federal contractor compliance programs. If [a government job] requires a bachelor's degree and 10 years of experience to do this job, you better not hire somebody that has an associate's degree in 9 1/2 years of experience in that job. I cannot consider you as a candidate if you don't meet at least the minimum requirements, and so every single one of them. And that's where I think some companies and some recruiter’s get confused around even just the drafting of job descriptions: [Basic] qualifications should be very basic. It should be one or two bullet points, typically a degree in years of experience, and then you can have preferred qualifications, which is as long as you meet these top two, we'd really like it. It’s important to realize that, in US Govt work, Basic Qualifications are actual compliance-based requirements.

?

Q: When you see quantitative impacts on resume [bullet] points, are you ever thinking that's ‘too good to be true’, because I have a conversion rate at 200%, that is a big number, but it's accurate based on the data that I have. Will a recruiter call bullshit on any metric-based impacts?

A: I don't think a recruiter will ever think that. Maybe if they're, if they're picking through your resume with a fine-tooth comb. I noticed it in your LinkedIn bio and I'm assuming your resume reads somewhat similar--the ability to quantify things. I think, far too often, candidates have resumes that read like job descriptions. We want to know not only what you did, but the impact that you made.

So, what are my takeaways?

• Recruiters are humans, too. They've also been affected by the layoffs and your negative interview process experience may be due to them being short-staffed. Try to be more empathetic and forgiving.
• Candidates receiving job offers are generally sourced / scouted by a recruiter to some degree, and are not cold applicants.
• Recruiters are not manually posting to each Job Board. Job Boards (LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc) automatically scrape job postings from platforms like JazzHR. JazzHR and LinkedIn Recruiter are commonly used recruiter tools.
• US Gov't Jobs: You MUST meet 100% of all Basic Qualifications listed on the Job Description, or you will 100% be rejected, by law.
• Generally, recruiters aren't throwing away 90% of applications to save time, unless they're bad at their job. Yours is being seen.
• Integrate as much "impact" into your job experience bullet points as you can. Eg. Managed X dollars, Maintained a 99% Customer Satisfaction Rate, etc. Don't hesitate about perfect accuracy of the metrics, just make sure they're present. Note: Don't lie, don't be unethical.

We ran out of time, but I have another few dozen questions to ask. So, I'll be back. I'll keep asking these questions, I'll ask other recruiters the same, and I'll share what I learn. Hopefully, we can all help each other to prosper together.

I am currently #opentowork as an #AWS Cloud Solutions Architect, and Josh is always hiring!

A very special Thank You to Josh Brence for his willingness to chat, and for being a genuinely good human being.

Links:

• Josh Brence: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/joshbrence/
• OFCCP Posting & Notice Requirements (PDF, for US Govt Jobs): https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ofccp/CAGuides/files/Postings&NoticesGuide-CONTR508c.pdf
• Recruiter Guide to JazzHR Sourcing: https://help.jazzhr.com/s/article/Sourcing-Candidates-with-JazzHR